


War Horses

by PaulAtreDeezNuts



Series: Tumblr Shitposts [4]
Category: Mulan (1998), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Other, a fictional island kingdom in vaguely old-timey whenever, and mulan is in hybridized fictionalized china, because rapunzel is from Corona, in this context is perhaps even more confusing than usual, khaximus, so make of it what you will, the political implications of war bewteen nations, this is a shitpost in fic form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 12:04:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16304861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulAtreDeezNuts/pseuds/PaulAtreDeezNuts
Summary: What was once a moment in the sunshine has become a clouded memory.





	War Horses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WordCubed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordCubed/gifts).



Many cold winters ago Khan had been stilled in his stride at the sight of a gilded mane and glowing flank shining in the sunlight. Two hard years ago his hooves had been stopped once again by the arresting vision of a powerful stranger surveying the world as if it was his own.

It had been a long two years.

Khan had been silently stalking the streets beside the harbor with his companions when a strange and lovely ship had cracked the morning silence with the terrifying boom of cannons - people of the city and the wharf, just fishermen and shopkeeps, had fled from the fire and noise. The ship let down a gangplank and from belowdecks came the thunder of hooves, cutting and silver and echoing across the water. Khan's world dissolved, the street around him falling out of focus as the early sun radiated off that once-seen, once-loved white coat. On the stranger's back there rode a terrible princess, her long hair glowing more golden than the mane of her steed and a terrible shout rose from the ship.

War had come home once more for Khan, his time at peace before a plow was over.

***

Maximus neither knew nor cared why he went to war - he was bred for war and it was what he had been trained for since he was nothing more than a knock-kneed colt, his hooves stumbling uncertainly over cobblestones in his first set of shoes.

He had been so small then, a slip of a thing - startling at loud noises and falling out of formation at the slightest provocation. He was a leader now, strong and proud and carrying his queen into the fray as she fought for - well, what she fought for didn't matter to Maximus, only that she fought and it allowed him to charge into the battles where he most belonged.

Two years he had been holding his queen high above the hue and cry as men slashed and fought and roared through mud and blood. She would sing her terrible song and the soldiers in their silver armor would stand again, their wounds closing and bones knitting. The strangers never rose, though. She didn't sing her song for them.

The power of it was heady - overwhelming. Maximus himself had felt awed and humbled when she had healed a great gash over his ribs. He had been sure that he would die, hopeful that perhaps his queen would at least make it quick, grant him the mercy he had earned through hard service. But he had been astonished to see her gifts used on something so base and lowly as a horse - that she would share this power with him, that she thought him worthy of life, worthy of fighting for her - oh, to be so loved! Maximus was as drunk off her magic and mercy as the rest of her army was. They had come to fight for their queen but they stayed to sacrifice all to their goddess.

All except for memory.

It was a dark afternoon on that field. The sky rolled with thunder and the mud was an ugly shade of maroon that stunk of iron. The lines had pulled away from one another, Corona's army gloriously whole and golden while the strangers wept for their dead and wallowed in the dirt. The queen was at the center of her people, tending to them, loving them, making them whole and hungry for the gifts they could give her and Maximus was riderless for the moment. He trotted along the boundary between the two armies, giddy in the knowledge that if he was wounded he would be saved.

It was then that he stumbled, halted in his tracks by a slim ankle and a wide, emerald-green eye glazed in pain.

There, alone in the mud and blood, was the strange and beautiful stallion Maximus had convinced himself was a dream. It had been so long since that enchanted morning that he had trained himself to think of the lost chance as a figment of his imagination, a pleasant fantasy brought on by exhaustion. But here he was, real and screaming.

The white blaze on his face was marked with the smeared and bloody print of a small hand, his mane was matted, and the slim strong limbs that had taunted Maximus' imagination for all of these years were spattered with filth, one of the rear legs shattered below the knee in a bloody mess that ended in a sickening spike of bone.

Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Something awful had happened to make something so beautiful into something so ugly and wretched. Maximus let his gaze be drawn to the grisly remnants of the leg. A cannonball. That was the only thing that could have done this.

And Maximus himself had pulled the only cannon on the field into place today, directed by his queen to put it where it could do the most harm.

All of this came to him in a matter of seconds and the realization that this was his fault, that but for him and his war this proud and lovely stallion would be whole and perhaps racing with him through green meadows, painted itself on his face.

And in the mud the bleeding horse saw that realization creep into Maximus, and Maximus saw that the dying stranger _knew_ it.

***

Khan knew he was dying. His companions had left him, as he had bid them to - his small friends telling the larger ones what he needed them to do; to care for themselves and their farm, to make peaceful days come again and to think of him with a smile when they went to their shrine. He knew his friends were heroes, and knew that the little red dragon could be a fool but that his magics could call others and soon they would and the fight would be more even as it went forward. He wished that he could live to see it, but he could die at peace, knowing that he had pushed his friend and her secret foal out of the way of the hideous ball that had taken his leg.

They would go on, his friends, they would have a family, they would bring peace. It was their destiny.

But now that they had left him Khan was alone in his pain and unashamed to give voice to it. He could not have let his friends hear his misery but they had started a new journey and he had no reason to stifle himself. He mourned for the beauty of the land, he mourned for the men dead in the dirt around him, he mourned for the years that he would not know. He screamed for himself into the leaden sky, and wondered what human stupidity had done this to him.

It was then that he saw the white horse stutter to a stop.

He was still fine and muscular, a little gray creeping in to the dark muzzle only made him more striking. He glowed with health, and when his eyes went round in recognition they were still warm and brown. He looked over Khan's ruined body and those warm eyes widened, seeking his own green gaze and meeting it, heavy with guilt.

It was him. IT WAS HIM. There were no other horses among the invading army and the field was too wet for a dozen men to push a cannon across it. He couldn't have struck the fuse himself but without him there would have been no fuse to strike.

Khan neighed mournfully and let out a long moan, heavy with the lost promise of his life - what he could have been, what _they_ could have been, what the world could have been without the blunt stupidity and greed of this petty human war.

The white horse took a step toward him and Khan thrashed where he lay, giving voice to his rage and betrayal. The glowing stallion had been a vision of hope, the promise of care and adventure and long dark nights full of sweet sounds and instead he stood up to his ankles in gore, looking lovingly down at a life he had ended. Khan couldn't sustain his protests, though, and soon fell to panting at the feet of the whole and beautiful stranger. He couldn't see very well, the legs he still had felt cold and the one he didn't have was a ceaseless, maddening heat. The white horse stepped forward again and Khan hadn't the strength to protest anymore. He closed his eyes and felt warm lips against his forehead, listened to warm breath snuffling at his mane.

When he opened his eyes the white horse loomed over him, impossibly tall and far away.

But his ankles were close enough.

***

Maximus pressed his lips to the stranger's brow, trying in his clumsy way to say the best goodbye to what might have been. Those striking green eyes opened one last time to look deeply into the heart of him, and then Maximus' world exploded in pain.

***

Khan's smooth legs were slender but they were strong. You don't get to be a farm horse unless you've got strong legs and Khan was a magnificent farm horse. He was built for pulling plows and hauling carts and helping with the harvest, not for war.

Warhorses had, relatively speaking, weak legs.

Which was why Khan was able to shatter both of the white horse's forelimbs with a single, well-placed strike of his remaining leg. The warhorse fell, startled and screaming and Khan was given a final gift - blessed by his ancestors or just lucky, he would never know, but the stranger fell with his chest toward Khan, and his thrashing, broken legs could do nothing to block a simple farmer from doing what needed to be done. It took four hard kicks and all of Khan's energy for his sharp hoof to first break skin, then break ribs, then finally kick through flesh to the heart of this invader, this strange white horse who had shattered the morning silence and torn away Khan's heart and destroyed his dream of beauty with the reality of the power-mad demon before him.

He stopped screaming when Khan's hoof hit spine from the inside of a gory cavity.

Khan smiled. His forelimbs were cold, his missing leg was burning, but at least this third leg felt right at the moment. He had done what he needed to do.

And with that strange thought he drifted away, a warhorse no more.


End file.
